Month: July 2019

IMAGE: Ferroelectric domains in a WTe2 single crystal (PFM imaging). view more  Credit: FLEET In a paper released today in Science Advances, UNSW researchers describe the first observation of a native ferroelectric metal. The study represents the first example of a native metal with bistable and electrically switchable spontaneous polarization states – the hallmark of ferroelectricity.

When the first full-length movie made with the advanced, three-color process of Technicolor premiered in 1935, The New York Times declared “it produced in the spectator all the excitement of standing upon a peak … and glimpsing a strange, beautiful and unexpected new world.” Technicolor forever changed how cameras — and people — saw and

An anchor, an ibex and an Egyptian cat: all images that a research team from Brown University, led by Jacob Rosenstein, encoded and decoded from mixtures of small molecules called metabolites. They demonstrate the potential of this small-molecule information storage system in a new paper published July 3 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. Microchips

An interdisciplinary research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has built platinum nanoparticles for catalysis in fuel cells: The new size-optimized catalysts are twice as good as the best process commercially available today. Fuel cells may well replace batteries as the power source for electric cars. They consume hydrogen, a gas which could

Machine enhanced humans – or cyborgs as they are known in science fiction – could be one step closer to becoming a reality, thanks to new research from the University of Surrey and Harvard University. Researchers have conquered the monumental task of manufacturing scalable nanoprobe arrays small enough to record the inner workings of human

A tsunami holds its wave shape over very long distances across the ocean, retaining its power and ‘information’ far from its source. In communications science, retaining information in an optic fibre that spans continents is vital. Ideally, this requires the manipulation of light in silicon chips at the source and reception end of the fibre

By energizing precursor molecules using a tiny, high-energy supersonic jet of inert gas, researchers have dramatically accelerated the fabrication of nanometer scale structures. The rapid additive manufacturing technique also allows them to produce structures with high aspect ratios. Now, a theory developed to describe the technique could lead to new applications for additive nanomanufacturing and

Plant leaves have a natural superpower — they’re designed with water repelling characteristics. Called a superhydrophobic surface, this trait allows leaves to cleanse themselves from dust particles. Inspired by such natural designs, a team of researchers at Texas A&M University has developed an innovative way to control the hydrophobicity of a surface to benefit to

IMAGE: New deep learning models predict the interactions between atoms in organic molecules. These models will help computational biologists and drug development researchers understand and treat disease. view more  Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 2, 2019–New work from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the

IMAGE: Researchers could synchronize two crystal optomechanical oscillators mechanically coupled. view more  Credit: D. Navarro In 1665, Lord Christiaan Huygens found that two pendulum clocks, hung in the same wooden structure, oscillated spontaneously and perfectly in line but in opposite directions: the clocks oscillated in anti-phase. Since then, synchronization of coupled oscillators in nature has been